In the short term, the greatest risk in Iraq is that the country spirals into a more dire state of chaos. This would make the transition to democracy less likely, cost the lives of many more Americans and Iraqi civilians, and create an oozing cesspool for terrorist groups to recruit and train.

In the long term, the risk in Iraq is that children who once went to school to learn to read, write and count will instead spend all of their academic time on the kind of “religious” education that helped to create a generation of terrorists. That would be, in every sense, a worst case scenario. And it’s already looking like a trend.

Everyone has advice for John Kerry going into the three debates. Even Al Gore has chimed in:

But more important than his record as a debater is Mr. Bush’s record as a president. And therein lies the true opportunity for John Kerry – because notwithstanding the president’s political skills, his performance in office amounts to a catastrophic failure. And the debates represent a time to hold him to account. For the voters, these debates represent an opportunity to explore four relevant questions: Is America on the right course today, or are we off track? If we are headed in the wrong direction, what happened and who is responsible? How do we get back on the right path to a safer, more secure, more prosperous America? And, finally, who is best able to lead us to that path?

... The debates aren’t a time for rhetorical tricks. It’s a time for an honest contest of ideas. Mr. Bush’s unwillingness to admit any mistakes may score him style points. But it makes hiring him for four more years too dangerous a risk. Stubbornness is not strength; and Mr. Kerry must show voters that there is a distinction between the two.

If Mr. Bush is not willing to concede that things are going from bad to worse in Iraq, can he be trusted to make the decisions necessary to change the situation? If he insists on continuing to pretend it is ‘mission accomplished,’ can he accomplish the mission? And if the Bush administration has been so thoroughly wrong on absolutely everything it predicted about Iraq, with the horrible consequences that have followed, should it be trusted with another four years?

The biggest single difference between the debates this year and four years ago is that President Bush cannot simply make promises. He has a record. And I hope that voters will recall the last time Mr. Bush stood on stage for a presidential debate. If elected, he said, he would support allowing Americans to buy prescription drugs from Canada. He promised that his tax cuts would create millions of new jobs. He vowed to end partisan bickering in Washington. Above all, he pledged that if he put American troops into combat: ‘The force must be strong enough so that the mission can be accomplished. And the exit strategy needs to be well defined.’

Comparing these grandiose promises to his failed record, it’s enough to make anyone want to, well, sigh.”

Gore is right about the Bush record. But I wonder if his advice is enough. If you look at the numbers, it’s already pretty clear that a majority of Americans want a change of direction. While many of us (myself included) have offered Kerry advice on the many ways to attack the Bush record, I think the 90 minutes on Thursday night will be more about the messenger than the message.

Since this is the week of debate wishing and advice, I figured I’d toss in my own idea for the perfect debate. I would like to see Jim Lehrer, Charles Gibson, Bob Schieffer and all of the carefully vetted townhall participants agree to ask, over and over and over, about only one topic.

The general question I’d like to hear asked until answered:

So come on. What’s the deal with this whole Skull and Bones thing?

Remember, whichever guy wins the debates and the election, the Bonesmen come out on top. How did we end up with two clubmembers on the same ballot for the nation’s top office?

What goes on during their initiation? Who are the members? Has either candidate for president ever done anything which, if caught on network television, would result in a massive fine from the FCC?

There are many more related questions I’d like to pose, but for some reason, my keyboard and my computer have sudddenly stopped worki…

Mathew Gross points out that during this election cycle, there has been almost no public discourse about the fact that the next president may make at least one new pick for the Supreme Court or the fact that oil prices are going through the roof.

These are just two of the issues that have been lost in the all Iraq all the time public debate. Actually, it’s not all Iraq and the war on terrorism. It’s also about Vietnam and Alabama in the 70s.

This is by design. It’s not a coincidence that the Bushies pushed to have foreign policy headline the first (and therefore the most watched) debate session. For several years we’ve been fixated on the war on terror and the war in Iraq. Meanwhile, a rather one-sided cultural war has been taking place.

This cultural divide (Church/State issues, stem cells, gay marriage, Janet Jackson’s knocker, etc) rarely even comes up on the campaign trail. And think of some of the issues that often dominate a presidential election. The economy. Healthcare. Crime. Jails. Judges.

These issues and more are largely off the table in this election. Instead its all about war and perceptions of personal values and character. That is partially a result of the times in which we live. But it’s also a result of one side framing the election around the issues where they think they will win and the other side letting the frame stay there.

It’s already pretty clear what the Bush strategy will be during the first debate. It’s the same strategy that’s been in place since the early days of the campaign (this one, the Clinton one, the Dukakis one). Bush will continue to position Kerry as weak and wishy washy on issues surrounding national defense.

Kerry will have two key challenges in this initial debate (three if you count managing not to sweat profusely). The first challenge will be to reposition himself as tough, strong on defense and solid in his positions. In some ways, this will be a three debate challenge for Kerry as many undecideds still don’t know him all that well. As I’ve written before (in Once, Twice, Three Times a Candidate), Kerry will be judged more by how his performances compare to one another than by how they compare to Bush’s.

The second challenge for Kerry is less obvious, but equally important. There is no way to dismantle, in a few hours, the tough guy image (the swagger, the Texas drawl, the moralistic and simplistic language, the I’m just a regular guy vocabulary) W has been honing for several years. To attack Bush on the issue of his toughness would be a mistake.

Kerry needs to go after Bush for being wrong on foreign policy. It’s that simple. Yes, you know where he stands. And yes, he has kicked a whole lot of ass in the last few years. But the President’s biggest vulnerability (and by extension, the country’s) is that he has more often than not kicked the wrong ass. Aggressiveness is only a virtue if it makes us more secure, not less so.

Iraq is the most obvious example. Nearly everyone outside of the administration’s incredible shrinking inner circle now agrees that the Iraq war at best was based on a terrible mistake and has been mishandled from the moment major combat ended. That’s the obvious one. But the President’s wildly swinging foreign policy disasters don’t end there.

Here are a few areas where Kerry can go after Bush.

North Korea: Here we see the Bush focus on what is known as moral politics. North Korea’s leaders are evil. Therefore we will not communicate with North Korea’s leaders. Period. This strategy feels good and may be effective in a setting such as, say, a school playground. But it is the wrong way to run a super power’s foreign policy. I recently attended a lunch with former Secretary of Defense William Perry. Perry is no fan of the Iraq war and believes that the Bush administration has failed to secure our nuclear facilities and ports. But according to Perry, the Bush mistake “of the century” was his decision to repeatedly humiliate North (and South for that matter) Korea before cutting off talks completely (even at the multilateral meetings among interested countries, the U.S. rep simply reads a statement and checks out).

When it comes to North Korea, Bush is tough. But he’s wrong. And America is less secure.

Middle East: Perhaps this policy can be traced (like the NK one to a certain extent) to a contempt for everything Clinton. Whatever the case, the Bush administration has made only backwards strides on the so-called roadmap to peace. I hate Arafat as much as anyone and the tough talk about terrorists and the unyielding support for Israel’s every move makes me feel good. But so far, it hasn’t made Israelis safer. It hasn’t sapped power from the worst of the worst among Palestinian leaders. And it hasn’t improved relations between Israel and her neighbors.

When it comes to the Middle East, Bush is tough. But he’s wrong. And because the Middle East is so connected with Islamic terrorism, America is less secure.

Missile Defense: According to a recent piece in the New Yorker: “The [missile defense] appropriation for next year is more than ten billion dollars – about the same as the Army’s entire R. & D. budget, twice the budget of the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection in the Department of Homeland Security, and nearly twice the department’s allocation for the Coast Guard … Estimates [are] that the program will cost fifty-three billion dollars through 2009.” This cash and effort is being shifted towards a program of dubious effectiveness and questionable need at a moment in our history when more urgent issues are being ignored. Our shipping and port system is vulnerable. Our nuclear facilities are not well protected. As you’re reading this, more than 120,000 hours of potentially terrorism-related recordings have not been translated by the FBI. The missile defense billions (like the Iraq billions) could be better spent.

Bush is tough when it comes to national defense. But he and his priorities are wrong. And because of that, America is less secure.

Shrinking Coalition: Since major combat operations have ended in Iraq, the number of countries in the coalition has gone down, not up. America’s reputation abroad has suffered a similar demise. Yes, Bush has been steadfast. Yes, we will never, as the Veep likes to remind us, ask for a permission slip to defend our country. But the war on terror is as much an international law enforcement challenge as it is an all out war. And we need our allies to win both. Our allies are fewer in number and less willing to assist than they were a couple of years ago.

Yes, Bush has been tough when dealing with our allies. But he has been wrongheaded, humiliating and offensive. And because of that, America is less secure.

This is where Kerry needs to hit Bush; for being wrong and making us less safe.

When you think about the Bush record of toughness, it’s not such a tough an act to follow.

Joe Trippi thinks that the Gulf War will present the biggest challenge of debate for John Kerry. Not the current one. The one that took place more than a decade ago and the one that John Kerry voted against.

In an attempt to further question Kerry’s ability to lead, and to further depict Kerry as a flip-flopper, George Bush will likely ask Kerry to square his vote in opposition to Gulf War I with this vote in support of Gulf War II.

Bush will use the specter of Saddam’s Army crashing through Kuwait, massing on the Saudi Arabian border, his willingness to launch Scud missile attacks on Israel, multinational support, and troops from Muslim countries on the frontlines and ask Kerry why when Saddam was visibly such an imminent threat at the time that even Al Gore and Howard Dean supported Gulf War I – the Senator from Massachusetts opposed it.

Maybe Kerry will have to employ W’s best tactic at this point in the debate; being sure even though you’re probably wrong. In the Bush world, the correct answer to this question is: “I made that decision. It was the right decision. You know where I stand. Mission accomplished. Nucular.”

Maybe the President will not be too anxious to bring up that era in the first place. First, Kerry could discuss the fact that the Bush in office at that time successfully put together a coalition and managed to fight a war and gain the respect of countries around the world at the same time. Second, that was just about the time that W decided to trade a young ballplayer named Sammy Sosa.